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What we check

We look for the newest date the site gives anywhere we can see it: the lastmod dates in the sitemap, a dateModified in the home page’s structured data, and the latest item in the feed. Dates more than a day in the future are ignored.

If the newest is within 90 days, the check passes. Within a year scores 0.6, and older than that scores 0.2. If we find no dates at all, it scores half: not knowing isn’t the same as stale.

Why it matters

AI assistants and the search indexes behind them prefer current information. A site that shows no sign of change in years reads as abandoned, and may be crawled less often, so even the things you do change take longer to be noticed.

Dates are also how a machine tells which of two answers is newer. If your prices, team, or product changed, a recent date helps the new version win over an old copy somewhere else.

How to pass

If the site is finished — a record of something that’s over — there’s nothing to fix, and this check won’t cost you much. Otherwise:

1. Publish something: a post, an update, a changed page.
2. Make sure your sitemap carries real lastmod dates that change when pages do:

   <url><loc>https://example.com/pricing</loc><lastmod>2026-10-20</lastmod></url>

3. Optionally, put a dateModified in the home page’s structured data:

   <script type="application/ld+json">
   {
     "@context": "https://schema.org",
     "@type": "WebSite",
     "name": "Example",
     "url": "https://example.com/",
     "dateModified": "2026-10-20"
   }
   </script>

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